Just for those who don’t want to read the full story on the Maier case, the people who bought the negatives and wanted to use the photographs entered a voluntary royalty sharing agreement with the closest heir. There was no court ruling on who got what. So that case doesn’t really help here.
Interesting. I’d have thought the courts would rule that, ordinary people doing ordinary things in a public place would have no expectation of “privacy” or whatever, and therefore not much to be done about commercial use. But I can also see the arguments to the contrary.
The nice young lady gazing wistfully from her car, if someone were to use that image in a commercial advertisement or similar, she should be compensated. It sure gets complicated as time goes by (though not too much time)